Happy Father’s Day!

Happy Father’s Day to all dads out there! Father’s Day is becoming more special for me, of course, now that my husband is a new dad and an amazing one at that. He really goes above and beyond taking care of her even when he’s incredibly busy and tired and I honestly couldn’t ask for a better father or husband so I know I’m really lucky. Case in point, I was shooting a wedding all day yesterday and, without me asking, he was nice enough to send me this picture of her enjoying her day with daddy (it was the first time they were alone together for more than a couple of hours):

Seriously, how adorable is that? So of course we had to make the day a bit special for him! He spent time with O:

Her onesie says “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.” Very apropos. 😉

And she incredibly enough discovered her feet for the first time as I was taking these pictures, which kind of made the day even more awesome!

He got two cards, one from O (she told me what to write in it, of course) and one from me and the puppies. He also got a box of chocolates from Jacques Torres AND an electric grill! We can’t use an outdoor grill on our balcony (fire safety regulations, blah blah blah) and my husband LOVES to grill and is always complaining about our dinky and dying George Foreman grill so I went all out and bought him a pretty amazing grill… he opened it and immediately asked if we had steak for him to cook, LOL! Too bad we didn’t. 🙁 What we did have, though, was the ingredients for a yummy recipe from Smitten Kitchen for Chocolate Swirl Buns which I saw when she posted it on Friday. I knew that this was something my husband would LOVE so of course the first thing I did was make sure I had the ingredients to make it today.

The recipe started out a little shaky when my yeast flat out refused to foam when I added it to warm milk. I had no idea why this was happening (I don’t bake a lot, I’m more of a cook), but I knew that the yeast was not expired (there was a year left on the expiration), the milk was the right temperature (I used a thermometer) and we had just bought it to boot. But then I saw online (thank you internets!) that this can happen and that if you use it and the dough rises then you’re good. If it doesn’t, well, then, no buns for us! So I just made the dough, crossed my finger, set it to rise and was SO happy to see that it did! The recipe called for you to make a rectangle out of the dough and I failed miserably at this (my rectangle was truly laughable) but no matter! At least it rolled up okay, even if it was a bit uneven. 😉

And I can’t claim they cooked up nice and perfect like the ones in the recipe, but I tried!

I love how lopsided they are! ha!

But they sure looked delicious!

And they tasted even better than they looked!

Success!!! And yes, he is using poor O as a tray… she’s already being abused, poor girl. 😉

We also went on a nice walk around the neighborhood and just had a mellow day all around. All in all, a really nice Father’s Day around here! What did you do? I hope whatever it was that it was a nice day and at least as enjoyable as ours. 🙂